Dream Theater - under a glass moon (Images And Words)
Immortal - battlefields (Blizzard Beasts)
Alice Deejay - will i ever
Black Sabbath - neon knights (Heaven And Hell)
Savatage - hall of the mountain king (Hall Of The Mountain King)
Summoning - a distant flame before the sun (Stronghold)
Abdullah Ibrahim - blanton (African Suite)
Equilibrium - tote heldensagen (Turis Fratyr)
Machine Head - blood for blood (Burn My Eyes)
Dream Evil - fight you 'til the end (Evilized)
İzel - direniyorum (Bir Dilek Tut Benim İçin)
Black Sabbath - wheels of confusion/the straightener (Vol. 4)
Belphegor - abschwörung (Blutsabbath)
Anthony Hamilton - do you feel me (American Gangster Original Soundtrack)


A bargain kicks off today's round, I bought this album quite cheaply as my first encounter with Dream Theater. I have to say I didn't hear it a lot :-) This is not necessarily my kind of Progressive Metal, this song was not bad though. Confusing as it has to be (it's Progressive Metal, you know?) and enjoyable. TOTALLY different then the Black Metal warriors from Norway - the sound is really something you have to get used to. Not uninteresting, but I can't say that a lot happened when this track was on. Unbelievable how distinctive Abbath's vocals sound. The next track might get close to what you'd call "embarassing". It's a bubblegum techno song from 2000 I think - I personally never heard of Alice Deejay again. This not only features an impressivly silly Single album cover, but also a very good melody line and chorus. What would Immortal think if they saw this playlist?

'neon knights' - what can you say? This is a brilliant tune and a true classic. Great vocals and lyrics by Mr. Dio. Another Metal cult band, this time from the USA, is up next: Savatage and the eternal 'hall of the mountain king'. A great song and awesome US Metal sound. Definitely a must have, the young Savatage before they moved on to a more operatic (did I hear pretentious?) Metal sound and Jon Oliva's vocals weakened. A cool song idea is presented by Summoning then, but it's majorly disturbed by the very harsh and not exactly fulfilling vocals in my opinion. Musically great, but Silenius tries to kill it with the jangling.

Abdullah Ibrahim's 'blanton' is a fascinating piece of contemporary music - touching dissonance but always finding back in time. Turis Fratyr and their fast heldensagen-song are also nice but quite predictable. Machine Head sound like Machine Head, and Dream Evil sing a very nice verse melody to then shout a chorus about certain other departments you have to face every day: fight you 'til the end! No, I'm kidding... The chorus is a bit platitudinous (and yes, I had to look up this word and don't know if I use it correctly), but all in all that's a fine tune. "Bir Dilek Tut Benim İçin" is a great album, but I realized this only after a couple of listens, because a big part of this is slower, a bit melancholic sounding tunes like this one. 'direniyorum' is not the strongest track on this album, but still mighty fine. I have to listen to this whole record again soon...

A weeping guitar then opens the second Black Sabbath song today, this time from their earlier phase and with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals. Tenacious, smokey 70ies sound and a great Ozzy - cool track and a great closing melody. Belphegor do just about everything right on the following song - excellent song title, unbelievable album cover and an amazingly fast blasphemous beast of a song featuring a Slayer solo. A certain professional Sniper is to thank for the American Gangster Soundtrack, and 'do you feel me' is just as great and classy as every track on this recording. It's so good to see that new Soul music can still sound like that.


--MightySapnish--